INTERNET IN BUSINESS

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INTERNET IN BUSINESS
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The Internet

• Browsing
• Range of choices on the screen
• Pre-selection of possible choices to pick one
• Professionals
• Retailers, Real Estate Professionals and Jewelers
  etc
• Business Sites
• Selling a product or service
• Sites representing conglomerates and
  entrepreneurs
• Screen Resolution Window Size
• Ice Page
• The primary content is fixed and is frozen to
  the left margin.
• Jello Page
• Has a fixed width but wiggles and jiggles to
  center itself on screen.

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BabyCenter, an online retail company
Vitesse, a semiconductor manufacturer
UPS (United Parcel Service), a delivery service
GE (General Electric), electrical products
manufacturer
Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical manufacturer
Merrill Lynch, a stock broker
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The Internet

• Liquid Page
• Will re-flow to fit no matter what size window
  you pour it into.

The images shown here are wide because they look
this way on a wide screen
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E-Commerce Retail Sites

• A new economic order Buying and Selling over the
  Internet (retail ? etail)
• Buy used items
• Compare prices
• Buy collections from anywhere in the world
• Shopping can range from some exotic items like a
  custom-made sports car to mundane items like CDs,
  videos, clothes, computers cosmetics,
  flowers--with just a few clicks
• Adding Content
• Something of more general interest to attract
  visitors
• Adventure tales

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E-Commerce Retail Sites

• Flirting with the Internet
• Online commerce is seen as a menace by those who
  do in-person business --- a sabotage to
  traditional sales channels
• But, a successful web site can alienate others
  --- Dave Smith Motors web site attracted many
  dealers.

The customers would have to configure a vehicle,
pick a dealer, and request a price quote
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Portals and Advertising

• Portal
• Many started out as search engines and then
  expanded their content and retail connections,
  e.g. Yahoo, Infoseek, America Online.
• Web sites carrying advertisements charge for them
  at rates that are directly related to the number
  of visitors
• They want to persuade you to use them as your
  guide
• Getting Personal
• The portal site needs some information from you
  that it can use to personalize your use of the
  site, e.g. my.yahoo.com
• They can supply data like local weather
  conditions, local news and sports scores, and
  even a portfolio of stocks you own
• They can also offer instructions on how to make
  the portal site your home page

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Portals and Advertising

• Another Source of Money
• Many portal sites have a significant revenue
  stream in the form of a referral fee
• The affiliates, based on deals made with portal,
  pay for the privilege
• More Advertising
• Advertisements on the web sites are in the form
  of banner ads or little applets, showing some
  sort of motion to get our attention
• Users are often reluctant to click through ---
  one solution is to have a live banner
• The most effective Web advertisements are
  context-sensitive that is, the ad is related to
  the subject matter on the screen
• The disadvantage of these ads is that these
  graphics and applets take time to load or the ads
  load first --- site manager wants to make sure
  that you see the advertisements before you go
  clicking off somewhere else

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Portals and Advertising
Banner ads. Major traffic sites carry banner
advertisements strategically placed to match the
subject matter. (a) The Lycos site, which is a
search engine as well as a portal, opens with an
extensive list of categories. If you click
Computers, you will see the screen shown here,
which includes three computer-related ads (only
one of them in the actual shape of a banner). (b)
Starting with the HotBot search engine/portal,
click Travel to see the screen shown here, which
has three travel-related ads.
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Payments and Taxes

• E-Commerce Payments
• Some retail sites give you the option of phoning
  or faxing your order as some people are leery of
  submitting their credit-card numbers over the
  network
• Messages between the buyer and the online
  retailer are encrypted ---encoded. It would take
  a skilled programmer to undo the encryption
• The standard for online transaction payments is
  the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol
• http//www.apache-ssl.org/
• https//www.verisign.com/
• E-Commerce Taxes
• A law was passed in October 1998, called the
  Internet Tax Freedom Act.
• The act provides that the Internet be free of new
  taxes for three years while a committee
  determines if taxes should be imposed and, if so,
  how to do so in a uniform way

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Payments and Taxes

• E-Commerce Taxes
• State and local governments are allowed to impose
  sales taxes on Internet sales, provided that the
  tax is the same as that which would be imposed on
  the transactions if they were conducted in a more
  traditional manner

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Entrepreneurs

• Individuals can gain access to people and
  markets--including global markets
• For a minimum investment, far less than that
  needed for a physical store or office, you can
  have a server link and a smashing home page that
  exactly expresses the nature of your business
• Everybody has a chance, but it is not a level
  playing field
• Success Factors
• The key success factor for any commercial web
  site is repeat business
• Some primary success factors are
• Content
• The site must offer something--preferably
  several things--to keep interest up. An example
  can be The Motley Fool which lets investors ask
  questions and share knowledge

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Entrepreneurs

• Uniqueness
• Something not offered elsewhere, e.g. Cdnow and
  HotHotHot

A successful entrepreneur site. One of the
hallmarks of the Motley Fool web site is that it
has ever-changing content, which brings
investors to the site again and again, many of
them daily or even hourly.
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Entrepreneurs

• Success Factors
• Self-Help
• There should be a search engine. Customers
  should be able to configure and order products,
  troubleshoot problems, check on the status of an
  order, or track a delivery
• Community
• A key to the success of a commercial site is a
  sense of community. An outstanding example of
  this is the Amazon Books site
• The Conglomerates
• Visitors at the College Depot site, which sells
  college-type merchandise, may be surprised to
  learn that the business is based in the Gleeson
  family home in Trumbull, Connecticut. The
  Gleesons want to convey the image that they are a
  substantial company because they think it helps
  to build trust.
• The success is not automatic.